Runs on the Cloudflare free tier using a worker and a static html page!
I first made a Bicker chat application around 5 years ago, it was never published. This is a completely new piece of work carrying the same name, designed with memory of the great hopes that accompanied the early internet, before "the regulators turned up."
The application is designed to mitigate hassles introduced by things like UK GDPR and the UK Online Safety Act, by respecting the ephemeral nature of human conversation itself. It is very arguable that to the extent it stores user data, the server does not store personally identifiable information when the "worst of it" is the storage of two hashes to enable claims to reserved chat nicks. These auto delete if a claim to the nick is not made in a three week span. A nick reservation is not needed to join the chat.
The client stores nothing at all in any kind of persistent storage on the user's device.
Bicker is text only chat. The server only relays messages, anyone turning up at any time, cannot retrieve what was posted before they connected to the server. Chat messages auto delete on clients after 4 hours, this will not prevent something like a screen capture being made should anyone connected to the chat server make one.
Users can delete their own messages on all connected clients providing they retain the ephemeral credentials made when the message was posted. Users can ignore each other, and chat privately too. Users can wipe all messages from their client by the simple act of refreshing their browser.
I built this with the idea of it being useful for people frightened away from hosting forums and chat by things like the Online Safety Act. And I built it with the idea of making a chat application that can be got up and running, at no financial cost.
The application includes an optional event logger for system health monitoring. This logs high-level events—such as failed password attempts or nick conflicts to help operators diagnose issues. These logs contain no PII; they are purely functional, system-level indicators that cannot be traced back to an individual. Logging is at the discretion of the operator and can be disabled or wiped at any time. These logs if switched on, output to a preset non-publicized url.
As ever the code is provided without guarantees of any kind. There has been no external audit of the code or the system. Legislative burdens may depend on how the code is deployed, my own deployment has logging turned off on my Cloudflare account itself, but my chat server code's own event logger is switched on.